five by five: March 2006 Archives

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March 23, 2006

Warper party wrapup

Last night's Warper party was an amazing experience. As usual, exaltron's fanbase was in full effect, ie, master drumborg Andy O'neill showed up and the rest of you losers couldn't make it. Don't worry, exaltron still loves you, but not as much as he loves the Warper people, especially the uber-organized, um, organizers, Shakey and Moldover. Special thanks to Shakey for lending me a power supply after I tripped over mine just before packing up my laptop and snapped the plug right off it.

Warper is a serious geekfest, so I was right at home. Not only did they have a projector so the audience could peep all the on-screen scientificals, there was a professional videographer, Vlad, there filming the performances and interviewing performers on their rigs and software (should be posted to his site in the next few days). He and I also discussed the possibility of collaborating on a "promuctional" (my coinage, but feel free to take a bite) video that we would try to get posted on the Ableton website*. Another possible collabo came up with Mike from trackteamaudio who produces self-installing CD-roms chocked full of patches, loops and other cool stuff for use with Live. Your favorite borg has been planning to post some free loopage on the homepage for a while now, but working with this guy could open up a lot more exposure than my spiderweb scheme likely would have.

Finally, file under Delicious Rumors from Planet Geekitron: a couple unnamed laptopoligists last night were discussing a cracked version of Live that allegedly works for a few months, then out of nowhere just up and dies. Apparently a somewhat successful laptop artist was caught with her pants down when "her" software decided to bite it just before a gig. Mmmmm, sweet, buttery comeuppance.

Posted by exaltron at 12:04 AM | Comments (0)

March 19, 2006

Warper laptop party!!

sorry to have to drop this on you last minute, but I just grabbed an open spot at the legendary Warper party at the Botanica bar in Manhattan! What, you haven't heard about Warper? Ok, I hadn't heard of it either, but it's this really cool laptop DJ/musician throwdown that they do every month- mostly borgs using Ableton's Live software. So even if exaltron completely malfunctions, the other borgs are likely to "bring it" as the kids like to say.

From the website:

Warper is the party for people interested in getting in on the ground floor of the latest evolution in DJ culture. Conceived by users of Ableton Live audio mixing software to build community, showcase creativity, and share knowledge in the NY area and beyond. Your hosts, musician / Djs Shakey and Moldover, schedule the evening to include feature performers, open laptop jams, and discussion of styles in a fluid and energetic environment appealing to both participants and party people. Warper will be held monthly at various NY and Brooklyn venues and will additionally include all-ages parties, premium shows, and events on the road.

your favorite improvisational musicborg lays down the electro-hijinx at 9:30 in the front room.

what else?

Botanica Bar

47 east houston st., btw. Mott and Mulberry, NYC

MAP 212-343-7251

warper website (you can contact them if you want to sign up for a laptop spot)

Also, the CD is COMPLETELY DONE!!! My borg Mark Fallai is almost done with the CD design so it should be going to duplication in a week or so.

hope you can make it out on a school night!

Posted by exaltron at 10:13 PM | Comments (0)

March 01, 2006

Chomsky is a reject

Here's a post that some socialist loser posted on the Capitalism board on myspace about the best books on Capitalism, and my response:

FoxFistWrote:
Capital Volumes 1-4

Imperialism: The highest stage of capitalism

Manufacturing consent: the political economy of the mass media

Necessary Illusions: Thought control in democratic societies

Democracy vs. Capitalism: Restoring historical materialism

The orgins of family, private property, and the state

A People's History of the United States

The Iron Heel

There you go! that should start you off arguing against socialists. If you can read and understand all of those books and still love capitalism, I'm sure might be able to argue against a few first-year socialists. GOOD LUCK!

exaltron wrote:
Of all of those, I would have to say Manufacturing Consent is the sneakiest. Chomskyism is definitely the biggest threat to capitalism going forward, since he is one of the only socialists who is able to cloak his Marxism in the language of populism and democracy. In other words, tyranny by a small group of individuals is bad, but if we all vote together that Bill Gates doesn't deserve his billions because he didn't "labor" (ie, sweat and pant like an animal) enough, then it's perfectly OK to violate his rights and take whatever "society" (ie, another group of individuals who happens to be the majority) needs from him. After all, we know that Gates can't possibly be *creating* wealth, since Marx (oops, back to him again) told us that there is this static pool of wealth in the world, and since the big bad capitalists have hoarded all the means of production, they have cornered the market on all resources from now until the end of time.

Chomsky's trick in Manufacturing Consent is to create a monolithic media jauggernaut that operates in the same way as the death squads and storm troopers (not the ones from Star Wars) have throughout history, except that they don't, you know, murder civilians and torture people. What they do is they all get together and, with the help of Rupert Murdoch and one or two other guys who control the ENTIRE MEDIA, they conspire to.... MANUFACTURE CONSENT!! (sounds tres ominous, no?)

Now, the shell game here is that there is no fundamental distinction made between actual physical force (a gun to the temple, for instance), and the media "forcing" you to believe whatever Bill O'Reilly or Paul Krugman of the New York Times (another well-cloaked Marxist, but Chomsky lumps the NYT in with all the rest as TOOLS OF THE IMPERIALIST CONSPIRACY- they're totally not radical enough for him) -whatever these guys want you to believe, which is to say what the government wants you to believe, since they're nothing more than clever sounding boards for government propagandists. I'm not sure if Michael Moore is part of that conspiracy- He may be some kind of modern-day court jester, unleashed by the powers that be to create the illusion of freedom of speech and diversity in the media.. I'll get back to you on that.

That's why we need to have unlimited democracy! Well, I mean, we won't vote on whether you can have an abortion or have weird sex, cuz that's your business, we just want to control your wealth (that you totally stole from the proletariat) in case you're too productive (and hence in danger of weilding too much POWER). And we need to make sure that everyone gets the right information (namely ours) to make the best decisions, so in the interest of free speech, we will hold a gun to your head and make you pay for our message to be heard over all that other stuff that you *think* you want to read/watch on tv/hear on the radio, but really you've just been brainwashed by those TOOLS (of the imperialist conspiracy).

It really is a sad state of affairs when only the super-elite can afford the $100 or so that it would take buy a computer and connect to the internet, where they could discover the real truth. If the masses only knew that instead of watching Fox News, they could be logging on to MySpace and enlightening themselves with all kinds of regurgitated Marxist claptrap, they would surely slug off their imaginary shackles and taste true freedom.

Posted by exaltron at 12:38 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack